Make straight lines look hand drawn?

[angelize]

If you have either P&GD2013 or DPX you could go over the edges of the shape with the eraser tool

[handrawn]

as I understand it the idea was to as far as possible to redirect the path of the line, not 'scallop' it, ball point pen was mentioned and they tend not to give much of a variation in line weight unlike say a gillott dip pen which could

on that basis you'd be using both shape builder and eraser, and like Egg says practically redrawing it...

[angelize]

If one has those tools then the shapebuilder/eraser tool would be the easiest route. I did play around with Egg's method and going over the edges with the shapebuilder or eraser tool is much faster, and these tools do have a smoothing slider which can be used to determine how much they redirect the line. yes you would be in a sense practically redrawing a shape but it's quick and easy if you already have a vector shape.

[handrawn]

but not as quick as redrawing it with a graphic tablet and pen

[gingerbeardman]

I was talking with my girlfriend and she suggested using Illustrator. Annoyingly - because I hate Illustrator - she was right.

Effect > Illustrator Effects > Distort & Transform > Roughen...

This applies a roughness - or random wave effect - to lines.

You have control of:
1. how severe you want the roughness to be (wave amplitude)
2. how often you want the roughness to occue along the line (wave frequency)
3. whether you want the roughness to be smooth or jagged (interpolation)

The effect remains editable, and everything stays as a vector. Amazing!

So I suffered Illustrator for 30 mins and spat out a PDF that I imported into Xara.
The imported graphic features more detailed shapes because of the roughness.

Settings I used for this example:


And here are images to show the effect:

BEFORE


AFTER

[angelize]

this is a feature I'd love to see in xara so I'm starting a thread for this in the Dear Xara forum.

[steve.ledger]

And just how often would you use it I wonder?

[jon404]

I'm getting old. Reading all these excellent suggestions, found myself thinking -- 'hey, just draw it.' Then scan, photograph, whatever.' But I'm getting old. Only a few years ago, would have truly enjoyed trying out every approach on this thread... but now am reverting to pencil and paper, more and more. Changes!

EDIT -- just remembered, from the mists of the past, that Macromedia Fireworks had a hand-drawn line effect. Guess Adobe dusted it off for Illustrator...

[handrawn]

if I'd known you had access to illustrator I'd have mentioned it, nearly did in fact...

don't forget, if it's supposed to be a brush line there will be swells, on the other hand if it's a ballpoint pen there should be texture, ballpoint ink is a dye it is not solid black...

[Egg Bramhill]

And just how often would you use it I wonder?

As often as I need a line to look like a "POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS" piece of tape. That's a feature I really wish Xara had included